Travel Maven blog

No food or water, no dirt on your boots in New Zealand

The last time I traveled to Australia, in the mid-1980s, I remember being fumigated on the airplane – flight attendants running around the aisles and seats with bug balms, spraying hither and yon – before they let us out, wheezing onto the tarmac in Sydney.

After six weeks of a recent trip to Australia and neighboring New Zealand, I can tell you that the rampant spraying has stopped, but no one in this part of the world is any less afraid of the insects, germy mud or contaminated food that travelers might accidentally introduce to these island nations.

Moving a household back to U.S. from Germany

Hello from Germany where I am helping my son and his family of five pack up their house and move all their belongings back to the United States after three years abroad.

All is well, or will be totally when the U.S. passport arrives for one-month-old Bethany, who will need it to make her grand entrance into the United States. The passport is in the mail. Somewhere.

Meanwhile, we are, on a Sunday, getting ready for the house packers who arrive Monday morning at 8, with a crew to pack up everything that isn't moving.

In Europe, house packing is quite a business. Now that summer is here and school is out, families are moving to new jobs, from country to country, all over the world.

Theroux travel book on my bedside table

"The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road" by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; $25).

Paul Theroux celebrates his decades of wandering the globe in his latest book by collecting the best writing about travel from others, whose work shaped him as both a reader and a traveler.
 

He writes of the essence of travel experiences, of places that peoples consider to be "the navel of the earth," odd items that famous travelers carried with them, the fears of legendary travelers, and the best imaginary journeys.

Theroux's essential Tao of travel:

Leave home, go alone, travel light, bring a map, go by land, walk across a national frontier, keep a journal, read a novel that has no relation to the place you're in. If you must bring a cell phone, avoid using it. Make a friend.

I might add, read Paul Theroux.

David Molyneaux is editor of TheTravelMavens.com

 

Packing for a two-month trip to Europe

Travels with Charlie, the suitcase

How do you cram enough stuff for two months of travel – during the changing weather of fall – into a 50-pound bag? That was my limit, imposed by most international airlines, and specifically Lufthansa, which flew me from the United States to Frankfurt, Germany, in late September.

This was a smart weight limit anyway. I was not going on a tour bus, nor preparing to sit in a resort. I would wheel and carry my luggage through Europe – France, Germany, Italy, Greece – on planes, trains, buses, subways, a barge, and three ships, including one that eventually would cruise me back across the Atlantic to the United States.

Pulling 50 pounds of suitcase on wheels along city streets is not so tough, even in hill towns. Lugging 50 pounds up the steps of budget hotels is a bit of work. Carrying it up and down the steps of Europe’s train and Metro stations is a serious strain. I would have fared better with a 40-pound limit.

The 50-pound bag I named Charlie. It’s made by High Sierra, with three compartments, and actually can convert to a backpack. Fat chance.